Without Remorse (John Clark, #1; Jack Ryan Universe, #1)

by Tom Clancy

Rule of thumb is, one point three times the square root waterline length is your hull speed,

The past happened because a hundred little random things had to fall exactly into place in exactly the right way, in exactly the proper sequence, and while it was easy to accept the good results, one could only rage at the bad ones.

good enough was good enough, while perfect was always a pain in the ass and often not worth the effort anyway.

Una salus victus nullam sperare salutem. The one hope of the doomed is not to hope for safety.

there’s two kinds of people in the world, the ones who need to be told and the ones who figure it out all by themselves,

They were surrounded by Targets. Boston to the southeast, Westover Air Force Base to the southwest, two other SAC bases, Pease and Loring, within a hundred-mile radius. Portsmouth Naval Base, which housed nuclear submarines. If the missiles flew, they would not survive; either the blast or the fallout would get them.